Crazy Things I Do When Insomnia Strikes

I’ve written before about being an insomniac. Insomni-maniac is probably closer to the truth. If there’s anyone out there not sleeping like crazy, it’s usually me.

Photo credit: Nizaad

There’s a number of reasons:

My autoimmune conditions can have insomnia as a bonus

Most of my medications for aforementioned conditions come with built-in insomnia

I’ve had depression on and off for a lot of my life, but have had a very bad episode for the last fifteen months: depression causes insomnia

I keep replaying events and conversations in my head at bed time which one day I’m just going to have to finally deal with

And finally, that Type A, achievement-driven, million ideas per second, perfectionist personality of mine that I’m trying to control. It likes to spend bedtime planning, evaluating, regrouping, debriefing.

So all in all, sleep is like an exotic destination I dream of visiting one day, and no matter how much work I do to try to get there, I just don’t seem to mange it. Except at about 7 am. I can sleep through the days like a champion, but unfortunately society at large doesn’t really cater for people who function that way. And what makes it more frustrating is that Mr Raw could win gold in the Sleep Olympics – he’s asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow. Or even beforehand.

As I found myself getting up to my usual crazy insomniac antics at 4am I decided to keep a list of them:
1. Try and avoid screen time because screen time is not friends with sleep time. However when you’re bored because you’re awake, and your overachieving brain is telling you that you may as well not waste time, it’s hard to resist. And because I got rid of all my books and started to use the iPad instead when I went overseas, it’s now the only way I can read my books. So I get it out and tell myself I’ll catch up on my necessary reading and the blog reading I’ve wanted to do. But instead I Google things like giant boobie whale (it’s a thing!), and play games against strangers on the other side of the world who are wasting work time on the internet.
2. Decide it’s time to get out the hacksaw and try to finally get my funky, thick toenails to behave like the ads say they’d should, and try to saw them into thin, shiny beauties, but instead just end up causing myself pain . Yet I keep trying. Insomnia does not lead to sensible decisions.
3. Listen to the snoring coming from the pillow next to me and contemplate ways of stopping my husband from breathing without a) waking him, or b) killing him.
4. Wander out and stare at my snoring dog. Again. Poke her lots so that she’ll wake up and go to the toilet now while I’m awake instead of 5 minutes after I fall asleep, thereby leaving me with a smelly ‘good morning’ present to clean up. She’s 16 so she sleeps through all poking and continues to snore. Smugly.
5. Convince myself I need to pee. Again. I don’t.
6. Drink more water. Again.
7. Actually need to pee after all the water. Again
8. Make to do lists. Lots and lots of to do lists
9. Replay horrible scenes from movies in my head. Yeah, coz that’ll help with the sleep thing!
10. Stage imaginary conversations between myself and people I haven’t seen in ages, or ever met, or who don’t exist.
11. Weigh up the pros and cons of getting myself a pet pig despite my husband’s objections to me doing so. Or a llama. Or an alpaca. Or a monkey.
12. Think about all the fabulous good deeds I’m going to do tomorrow when I wake up bright and early, fresh-faced, and ready to shine. No, years of proof to the contrary have not made me remember at 3am that this will never happen.
13. Look through old photos. Or other people’s photos on Facebook. It’s only stalking if they know about it.
14. Make a list of life goals. Remember I’m not 20, I’m supposed to be slowing the hell down, and readjust list.
15. Start bribing myself to sleep. Myself is very incorruptible and refuses to accept bribes.
16. Sing advertising tunes in my head. Repeat in falsetto.
17. Finally work out what the lyrics to some obscure song that I sang incorrectly as a child really are. And what they mean. Wow! My 8-year-old brain just exploded 30 years later.
18. Wonder whatever happened to that girl/boy/dog/billboard from childhood?
19. Do laundry
20. Clean all of my glasses. I have 6 pairs and I’m pedantic about their spotlessness. Of course they’ll all be spotty again by morning, but again, 4am and logic don’t hang out together.
21. Do online surveys. Pretend I have 3 children, a mortgage, and a shopping addiction. I get to complete more that way.
22. Decide on a change of career and start researching everything involved.
28. Forget how to count. Or splel
24. Repeat several of the above steps.
25. Panic that I’ll never sleep again and wonder how am I going to get through tomorrow?
26. Sob quietly to myself
27. Take a warm bath
28. Drink chamomile tea
29. Have another go at those toenails
30. Reminisce about being an insomniac on the other side of the world and always finding an Aussie friend to chat to online at 4am.
31. Ugly cry
32. Consider cancelling one of the prerequisites to methods of stopping the snoring next to me.
33. Write poetry. Badly
34. Ponder the meaning of life. Ponder the meaning of Crocs. Ponder what came first: orange the colour, or orange the fruit? And why orange? Who invented that word?

Credit: Juli Cady Ryan

35. Stand outside and stare at the beauty of the moon and the stars, and listen to the waves in the distance. Then remember that the sun will soon rise, I’m not asleep yet, and repeat the ugly cry.

You get the idea. If I admit to many more I’ll be considered certifiable. But only at 4am.

So over to you. Suffer from insomnia? What acts of craziness or despair do you find yourself partaking in during the wee hours?

Or are you one of those horrible people who can sleep on a barbed wire fence?

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About Raw Once More

Recovering workaholic chronically ill perfectionist starting all over again (again!). After a crazy life (including running away with the circus), I'm learning to stay still and journeying towards health, happiness, and wholeness, by nourishing myself and the Earth. Interested in frugality, simplicity, creativity, sustainability, myo/diy, and living healthily with autoimmune disease.

and the nose-hose breather on the other side of the bed (sleep apnea CAUSES snoring, therefore he has a bi-pap machine) wakes up and tells me “do i have to read to you the book ‘go the fuck to sleep’?” because he insists that i actually LIE ON THE DAMN BED so he knows where i am instead of having to get up and roam the house trying to find me. dork. *eyeroll*

so all praise smartphones, from which games like bookworm can be played. and internet access. and YAY for Heffer the Nook, from which cheesy supernatural romances can be read (OMG there is some baaad writing in some of them!!)! and when i’m feeling really evil, there are booklights, which let me do word search puzzles.

in other words, i sympathise the hell out of you about the insomnia. every night. so i lie on the bed and any night i can fall asleep before 3 is a great great bonus. the nights that i greet the dawn suck ass. the nights when i’m still up when TheEngineer gets up for work, those mornings i do not greet happily.

however, the small servicepoodle is ALWAYS glad to wake up and play with me for a few minutes here and there in the middle of the night. and i’m very glad for that.

Ah yes. There’s usually a hose being breathed through on the other side of my bed as well, but there’s currently a mask issue so he’s snoring freely. He likes to wake up for a quick pee trip in the middle of the night, ask me, ” why don’t you just go to sleep? You’re not trying! If you just did this or that you’d go to sleep”, then puts his head back on the pillow and snores within a second, happy in his snort, sleep-easy dreams. Drives.me.nuts.

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Recovering workaholic, chronically ill, perfectionist, learning to stay still after a life of creative craziness (including running away with the circus). Trying to find health, happiness, sustainability, and wholeness. Should be easy, right?